Archive

On top of a road sign near Brick Lane in London last week an unofficial street art tribute was erected to Tommie Smith - one of two black American athletes who famously used an Olympic podium at the Mexico City Games in 1968 to stage a demonstration against racial discrimination in the United States. As the American national anthem played, Smith and John Carlos (gold and bronze medallists in the...

When the Olympic Torch Relay arrived in London, the official London 2012 website declared that 'London's moment to shine is here'. Early on in the history of the modern Olympic Games host cities realised that the Games were a chance to project a message of both civic and national pride to the rest of the world. Many Olympic posters present host cities through images of skylines,...

This is the second in a series of posts looking at Olympic posters from the V&A collectionPosters are one of the objects that preserve a material memory of an Olympic Games long after the athletes and audiences have dispersed and the event is over. There are also a number of ghost posters for Olympic Games that never happened because the weight of world events intervened. Helsinki would have...

As I sit down to write the first entry for this blog, London is buzzing with Olympic fever: there is only one day left to go before the opening of the London 2012 Olympic Games. This presents me with a perfect opening subject - especially as Olympic posters are an area of the collection that we’ve been focussing on for some time at the V&A.When London won the bid to host the London 2012...

In the painting below, a girl dressed in a delicate lace collar stares off to the left of the viewer. Though her identity is now lost, the girl remains enchanting to behold. Framing her face are two pearl earrings and, around her neck, a double string of pearls.V&A Inventory Number P.52-1962Gerrit von Honthorst, A Young Girl Wearing a Lace CollarOil on oak panel, Utrecht c. 1635. Simple and...

The V&A Network is made up of a number of individual V&A blogs. Contributors hail from all over the Museum and include curators, educators, librarians, exhibition teams, artists, designers and archivists.

Read the latest posts here or visit each blog’s homepage for its full archive: